Pallets are used to store and ship a wide variety of materials or products. Conventional pallets are most often fabricated from wood. One problem associated with wooden pallets is that they are a relatively high cost item. Wooden pallets are generally intended to be used more than once and, if damaged, must be repaired to make their use economically viable. Substantial costs are incurred in repairing wood pallets.
It has previously been proposed to include corrugated cardboard or other paper products in pallets. For example, in Yamaguchi et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,714,026 and Vilella U.S. Pat. No. 4,799,620, combination plastic and paperboard pallets are proposed. However, with these approaches, it is necessary to separate plastic and paperboard products prior to recycling, and again the costs associated with wood and plastic is relatively high compared to corrugated cardboard.
Clasen U.S. Pat. No. 5,076,176 discloses a corrugated cardboard pallet comprising cardboard sheets separated by a stacked, corrugated cardboard spacers. This approach, while offering an entirely corrugated cardboard construction, suffers from the disadvantage of being unduly expensive because forming a solid stack of corrugated cardboard requires a large quantity of corrugated cardboard which is then glued together to form the spacer blocks.
Applicant's invention is directed to solving the above problems by providing a machine which will reduce the cost associated with making corrugated cardboard pallets.
Important objects and advantages achieved by applicant's invention are summarized below.